AT&T CONVERSANT

Application Development

Bell Labs wasn’t really the best place to get these applications. Yes, some of the most significant applications (described below) were done by Bell Labs R&D, but there was too little application development capacity and at too high a cost for Bell Labs to deliver the applications that commercial sales would require.

Providing specific, tailored “applications” wasn’t unheard of within AT&T. There were pockets of talent in various locations that would be the first to be trained on the Conversant scripting (TAS) and development tool (ScriptBuilder). These organizations would evolve into groups within Lucent, and later Avaya, professional services. However, if Conversant was to become successful and widely deployed, AT&T’s application development capabilities were woefully insufficient.

The Independent Software Vendors

Within the first few years, it became apparent that Conversant could not become a successful commercial IVR platform unless AT&T sales could deliver both the platform and the customer’s required application(s). To solve this “problem,” a program was created to enroll third party partners whose role would be to deliver those applications. These Value Added Resellers (VARs) and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) would become loyal and necessary partners that were very much responsible for the success of the platform. Two of the earliest were Hager Telecom, Inc., later just called HTI, and Automatic Gaming Technologies, later just called AGT. The program would grow to about a dozen companies at the peak. AT&T and Lucent sales teams would bring the ISV partner into opportunities. Their software products would be bundled with the platform on the AT&T order, a useful symbiosis for both AT&T and the ISV.

Here’s a partial list of the ISVs who played a significant role in making Conversant a successful, internationally used IVR platform.  Only a handful of this group remain in business or in the same business, but these companies deserve to be remembered: